Review: The Loners (Quarantine #1)

The Loners by Lex Thomas

Format: ebook (eARC)
Pages: 416
Published: July 10, 2012
Publisher: Egmont USA
Genre: Fiction, Young Adult, Thriller

My Rating: 5/5

Summary (from chapters.ca):

It was just another ordinary day at McKinley High - until a massive explosion devastated the school. When loner David Thorpe tried to help his English teacher to safety, the teacher convulsed and died right in front of him. And that was just the beginning.

A year later, McKinley has descended into chaos. All the students are infected with a virus that makes them deadly to adults. The school is under military quarantine. The teachers are gone. Violent gangs have formed based on high school social cliques. Without a gang, you're as good as dead. And David has no gang. It's just him and his little brother, Will, against the whole school.

Review:

**NOTE:  A copy of this book was provided by the publisher, via NetGalley.  However, no compensations were made and this review reflects my honest thoughts and feelings**

As a school erupts in chaos and everyone separates into gangs based on social standings, do you know where you will fit in?  What if you don't?  What happens then?

I was NOT expecting The Loners to take off as fast as it did and I definitely was not expecting such an action-packed, hard-hitting, HOLY CRAP story.  I can honestly say that I was on the edge of my seat the entire book.  It isn't often that I can say the book read like a movie but I would not be surprised to see this movie rights for this book being picked up... it was THAT good!

One of the things that stood out the most to me in the novel were the social cliques.  It was perfectly broken down into groups that every single high school kid, or even adult who has been there done that, will be able to identify with.  We all saw the jocks, the pretty-ones, the geeks, the nerds, etc.  We all know that we were apart of one, it's just whether we honestly knew which one.  I can happily say that if my high school were to have been infected and had broken off into gangs, I would be safely tucked away in the library with the rest of the nerd-herd.  Yep... happily saying this! 

What Lex Thomas (a duo writing team of Lex Hrabe and Thomas Voorhies) did for the readers was bring you inside the world of 'teenagers gone wild'.  I would almost classify this as a modern day retelling of The Lord of the Flies.  The imagry that was used throughout the novel was amazing.  I never once found myself wondering what was happening and could always mentally picture each character and each scene in which the story was taking place.

As for characters, I really admired David as a main character.  His strength really shone through and I was able to see him as an underdog that would do anything to protect, not only himself, but his younger brother.  To humble yourself into knowing that you don't belong and yet being able to survive is a huge mountain to climb and I think David did it wonderfully.

Overall, I am so excited to see where the next book in the series will take us and it really was a page-turner of a story with an unexpected cliff-hanger ending.   Fans of action packed stories will not want to miss this one.